The shareholding owners of joint stock companies, by this plebiscite, will receive real power to exercise control over the companies they own. The Economist journalist appears to believe this is fuelled by resentment and popularism. Once again a so-called 'liberal' paper betrays its hatred of anybody other than elites. How dare people assert control over what they own! Shocking!

Leaders of the global village
cruise snow-flecked streets and dream of pillage.
Presidents of nations and bosses of cartels
build trust at the country’s plush hotels.
The Swiss play host to guests with plenty
nouveau riches and cognoscenti
haute bourgeois, pop stars, fat cats
UN-sorts that pimp in spats.
They pamper them until they swell
with Grisson beef and Emmental –
as gnomic fingers on the purse
loosen strings that self-disburse.

The Nobel laureate, Forum Grandee
pay homage (though they cannot see)
to Switzerland’s neat and tidy hills
municipal gardens and dentists’ drills.
While in the boardrooms of the land
from Winterthur to Bern and Gland
money talks – and should you catch a sound
you might hear stifled cries from underground.

Although English speakers don't tend to stick the -er on then end so it would work phonetically.
However, unfortunately unless they are Wallace (&Gromit) cheexperts experts I doubt if Appenzell would have the same resonance to the cheese layman.

Kudos to Mr. Minder for starting the initiative. The Economist finds itself again floating on an ever shrinking iceberg of defending exorbitant CEO compensation.

That shareholders should decide on compensation of top executives is the most natural thing, and totally in line with economic liberalism. I cannot see how a liberal paper such as TE could argue against it.

The author oversimplifies the Swiss vote. Certain things have very little to do with the difference between what an average worker brings home and packages awarded to failing bosses who wrongly believe that they cannot be replaced by better people for a fraction of the pay. it has however everything to do with plain old greed and nepotism. The nepotism is cut out, any company can still award as much as they like to their executives only now the power rest with the owners not with job-hoppers in the top.

Switzerland plebiscite would change banking as the human behavior, which entails risk-taking when gains are involved, while is risk-averse where potential losses are imminent, thanks to Kahnemann, is easier now to understand.

The bonus cap debate is very apt for the currency of events and now new knowledge is available, thanks to Kahnemann, his seminal book, “Thinking fast and slow”, provides some clues as to why large variable incentives that are mostly one sided (non-deductible when large losses are made) spark off risk taking behavior. If the incentives (sometimes referred as ‘perverse’ by Kahnemann), were such that when the traders lose their bets and large losses are made bonus pay should be deducted from the earlier payouts enjoyed, then the nature of risk taking would change as the typical response would be ‘loss aversion’ and no one would be willing to take large bets.
The design of incentives are very carefully crafted to spark off risk taking behavior where large winning bets have very ‘perverse’ pay out opportunities, while large losses means zero pay out as distinct from negative pay out. This is very elementary approach given what Kahnemann established in his Prospect Theory that humans display risk taking ability when gains are involved while they are risk averse to potential losses. By capping the losses to zero and by making gains substantial, the very nature of risk taking behavior by traders are modulated by the bonus pay. Now if that is going to be changed it would entail a whole new approach to trading.

Well done, Switzerland. Those who cannot moderate their own greed must be beaten to their financial knees politically.
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In the US, we need professional directors, properly trained, whose career is sitting on boards. No one who is judged by the board will sit on it, or have anything to do with selecting its members. No more taking executives at their own, inflated, evaluations, confirmed by a supine Board of Directors
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One would think that so obvious and outrageous a conflict of interest would never have been tolerated. Perhaps the only solution is Federal corporate law to supersede the excessively permissive results of the late 19th century race-to-the-bottom among the states in their greed for corporate money.

Rational rates are to be set as a parameter to benchmark pays to CEO or executive directors who are obviously seen to hold the deceision making capability and diligence in his performance.

In Hong Kong some CEO could be paid 100 mio and in China just mere 500,000.HK$.

Sometimes, an executive director is paid 6 times the salary of mine but all lousy result he contributes. Some CFO is paid ten times the salary of mine.
I did a lot of silent contribution and fit to be consulted in earnest but the people on top grab all the Crown of success. In occasions I let all these unfair companies and eventually they collapsed one by one.

Unfairness will be punished.

Now I work in true and fair sincerity with selfless group of cheerful honest people. We are doing big and everyone's is perpectually reviewed according to performance.

At this point, I feel that security and sufficient rewards to upbring the family members and welfare of the employees are very important indeed. Neglected children can go swayed and irreversible horrible situation of TIME lost is forever gone for a generation.

Play fair and the social group or executive team are same people doing unjust greed taking too much and leave too little money for the less-nepotism upright personality.

Long service employees and contributed with more attributes and credits should be paid more for his sacrifices or victimised inequal position otherwise be regarded as fair by the eyes of selfish leaders.

To pay a single person more than ten mio for golden handshakes are extravagant act of a few heads if the business's profits allow that, then we have no complain, but it is blatantly unfair when losses surmount : why pay to single person any way. why not use the fund for paying for "turn around" strategic expert or cleverer man than the failing manager.

Many small companies in Asia can do well because of expertise applied by single handed manager/shareholder, but not to conglomerate.

Human's rewards varies too often depending the on the sight of ultimate result whether profit or supoer profits.

It is good to critically review the salary system based on location or nations.

Money Currencies, standing and cost of living and pay scale.

What do you think of paying a million USD for a machine whereas similar functional one in China you need to pay one million RMB, a difference of 6 times. Here the factors of production, materials, labour, overheads and etc are to be considered in total.

Therefore, there is no uniformity in standards and costs, simply because you are living in two different hemispheres of the world.

Balancing of the world economies in all the continents require great efforts and dedication of people, political governments and international awareness and harmony: live in peaceful environment and burn all the weapons and use the money for human development. Any possibility to achieve these objectives. Who knows ... another twenty years or century?

How can a shareholder vote on executive compensation, be considered to be populist in a joint stock company. It is THE right of shareholders to vote on all matters that effect shareholder value.
Self serving boards had hijacked this right, and it is only appropriate that shareholders should have a vote on what is paid to top management, and for what..

Okay I know that I am repeating what a lot of people have already posted here, but allowing the shareholders a.k.a. the owners of the company to have a direct say in the running of the company that they own should be seen as pro-business and most importantly pro-accountability. The fact of the matter is that language is important. When talking of workers including any one from entry level front line workers to middle management the language used is performance and accountability. When talking of C Class executives and board of directors the language is of talent and populism. Heaven forbid anyone not paid millions is talented and anyone who is paid millions held accountable.

Whether a populist approach can work in favor of a Joint Stock company, is a good question given the prevalent market conditions that are turbulent competent and most rapid ever , changing. Also all credit to the think tanks who deserve the booty and the celebration for managing the turbulence and keeping up their word of profitability, performance, growth and continuity, but all until yesterday.

The days requirement should be evaluated more on the transparency and accountability requirement and a calculated distribution of the benefits. The perception of a social or populistic vision requires a revisit.

I remember a CEO of an MNC earning 770K annual income was fired for outdated strategy and failing technology adaptation and client service. A dedicated soldier for over 2 decades but failed to read the time speed and the changing client needs. The internal politics contributed to his delay and denial of fair decisions. A huge severance package was given as a parting gift for his loyalty. What is key here is whether companies are aware of their preparedness, financially in case they have to fire their bosses today. Is the risk evaluation done, can an organization claim its profitability with a clause " when the CEO is fired..." still the company can go on without cuts in employee salaries and budgets, new offices and recruitment drive, for the year ? Such is the impact of the CEOs package on a company's survival. The vertical growth of a CEO requires a widening of the ground covering the organization, the organization has to decide to what extent it can allow this widening with a clear differentiation between operational influence and monetary stake in the revenues. It appears that the Project budgeting in the Management plan would make an explicit mention soon, globally, a 1% contribution of the CEO top the project success and a rating done for every success story. A welcome change and an undisputed, visible and hard earned money for the C class executives.

How have we become a society that supports corporate greed and accelerating inequality gap? Is it human? Are we going to tolerate and justify monstrous obsession with money for the board members who turned their jobs in self serving machine?

What this article does not write is that there is a second citizen's initiative in Switserland which says that the top CEO cannot be paid more that twelve times than the lowest paid worker in any company. At present in Switzerland this number is 72 on the average.

Read the relevant article in Die Zeit. There it also seems to be clear that the second referendum, restricting the relationship between the CEO pay and lowest pay, has a good chance.
The Dutch are ready to put similar restrictions in place and although the UK was trying to get the EU parliament to drop the issue, the EU officials did not even take the time to talk to Cameron cs about this.
Switzerland maybe in Europe, but is not EU, It will have to do what the neighbors decide, but...

Read the relevant article in Die Zeit. There it also seems to be clear that the second referendum, restricting the relationship between the CEO pay and lowest pay, has a good chance.
The Dutch are ready to put similar restrictions in place and although the UK was trying to get the EU parliament to drop the issue, the EU officials did not even take the time to talk to Cameron cs about this.
Switzerland maybe in Europe, but is not EU, It will have to do what the neighbors decide, but...

I was thinking to resume residency in London again in a few months but this vote inspires me to remain Swiss resident and eventually take up the Swiss passport..This is the place where the vote counts and matters. Excellent news for shareholders and responsible business .

Populist ? No at all, it's just plain shareholder democracy. Calling this populism is just the language of the fat cats who have been filling their pockets for too many years, Vasella being the most blatant example. Switzerland has given a great example and the EU will surely follow it soon.

I fail to see how the binding guidelines of this people's initiative keep able managers to run a joint-stock company. These people are acountable to their shareholders and the self-serving mentality of people who run no risk to their fortunes while doing their job, and often badly at that, had to be stopped.

"Whether any joint-stock company can actually be run on populist lines is another question" - That's not the point. It's about telling CEO's and other Board executives that they can't treat their position on the Board as a licence to print money. They have to earn their pay, just like everyone else.

The statement "Whether any joint-stock company can actually be run on populist lines is another question" is extraordinary. What is extraordinary is that in western economies the senior employees of a company owned by shareholders can set their own pay (subject to board supervision) without the agreement of the owners, when they have a direct personal interest.

Why is the Economist worried that shareholder votes will be "populist"? Why would shareholders not be interested in securing the best possible performance for their shares?